Patrick Gowers (1936-2014)
Dr Patrick Gowers wrote beautifully-crafted, stylish music for film and television. What sticks in my head are his haunting theme for the 1982 television spy series Smiley’s People (Sir Alec Guinness performing the title rôle chillingly).
This music might have been inspired by Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis;
…and Gowers’s theme and variations for long-running television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (with the arresting Jeremy Brett in the title rôle).
Gowers’s counterpoint is free, captivating and perfect.
His grandfather was Sir Ernest Gowers who wrote an inspiring and valuable book called Plain Words, about how to write clearly in English.
